SDP focuses on national politics with a special emphasis on South Dakota. It also includes posts on philosophy, science and culture. SDP was founded by Jason Van Beek, who stopped blogging after becoming a staffer for Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and is currently operated by Ken Blanchard.

Monday, January 30, 2012

If the polls are accurate, and so far they have been pretty reliable, Mitt Romney will beat Newt Gingrich in the Florida Primary by more than ten points. No, this won't mean that Romney has the nomination all wrapped up, but it will suggest that Gingrich is very unlikely to take it from him. Only a week ago Gingrich was leading in a handful of polls. What explains Romney's recovery?

Three things: first, Romney outspent Gingrich 3 to 1 in Florida, a place where the TV market is both necessary and expensive. Second, Romney has built a substantial organization in Florida. Third, the Republican electorate in that state seems to have come to the same conclusion that Republicans across the country are coming to: Mitt Romney might win a general election against Barack Obama; Newt Gingrich cannot.

It is the last item and not the first that is decisive. Romney outspent Gingrich 2 to 1 in South Carolina and lost by full lap. The relationship between money and organization is reciprocal. The former helps you build the latter, but the latter helps you raise the former. No amount of money can buy the following poll numbers reported by Gallup:

Mitt Romney leads Newt Gingrich, 59% to 39%, in U.S. registered voters' perceptions that each "has the personality and leadership qualities a president should have." Romney also has solid advantages for being "sincere and authentic" and able to manage the government effectively. Romney and Gingrich are about tied, however, on understanding the problems Americans face in their daily lives.

Registered voters in 12 key swing states are almost evenly split between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in their 2012 presidential election preferences, while giving a 14-percentage-point lead to Obama over Newt Gingrich.

In short, Republicans tend to think that Romney is more electable and they look to be right, at least just now. They seem to be about to exercise prudence and moderation rather than spirit in their choice and that is very probably a good thing regardless of who wins.

What does the campaign look like, from this early vantage point? Obama has obvious advantages. The Presidency is an awesome institution. The President enjoys the majesty of the state and he has his own jet airplane.

What Republicans fear most is that Obama will turn out to be as ruthless and efficient as he was in his first campaign. For a sample of that, and for other things, I recommend Ryan Lizza's remarkable article in The New Yorker. Here, he reports on the Obama campaign's decision to attack Ms. Clinton personally during the nomination period.

Neera Tanden was the policy director for Clinton's campaign. When Clinton lost the Democratic race, Tanden became the director of domestic policy for Obama's general-election campaign, and then a senior official working on health care in his Administration. She is now the president of the liberal Center for American Progress, perhaps the most important institution in Democratic politics. "It was a character attack," Tanden said recently, speaking about the Obama campaign against Clinton. "I went over to Obama, I'm a big supporter of the President, but their campaign was entirely a character attack on Hillary as a liar and untrustworthy. It wasn't an 'issue contrast,' it was entirely personal." And, of course, it worked.

Politics is hardball and both sides will play to win. If anyone thinks that the Obama organization played nice or will play nice, that person is naïve. Here is another example:

On June 19, 2008, he announced that he would be the first Presidential candidate since 1976 to forgo public funds, which allow candidates to run in the general election while limiting the corrupting influence of fund-raising. This was an awkward and hypocritical decision, given that in 2007 Obama had explicitly promised that he would stay in the system. David Plouffe, his campaign manager, wrote in his memoir, "The Audacity to Win," that the promise had been a mistake: "We were overly concerned with making sure the reform community and elites like the New York Times editorial board, which care deeply about these issues, would look favorably on our approach." Obama, Plouffe noted, was "genuinely torn," but was eventually convinced that victory trumped idealism… From September 1st to Election Day, Obama outspent McCain by almost three to one, and, as many Republicans are quick to note, ran more negative ads than any Presidential candidate in modern history.

I find notable not only that "victory trumped idealism," not to mention the integrity of a promise, but that Obama's promise to stay in the public funds system was made not out of any scruple but in order to win over the New York Times. At any rate we know that Obama will do whatever he thinks he needs to do to be reelected and that his campaign organization last time around was adept at judging what he needed to do.

Putting these two considerations together, without even mentioning Romney's weaknesses, Obama looks formidable.

On the other hand, he also looks very vulnerable. Obama 2008 was all promise. The moment he became President, his powers of persuasion largely deserted him. Despite scores of speeches, he was unable to rally public support for his health care reform. If anything, support went down the more he talked about it.

Perhaps he will regain his moxy as the campaign goes on, but it hasn't happened yet and he has been campaigning full time. His approval rating at Gallup has risen above 50% only once, and that only briefly, since February 2010. So far his campaigning, including his State of the Union Address, has only managed a tie in approval/disapproval (46% to 47%).

The fact that he is currently tied with Mitt Romney doesn't mean much but it means something. Newt Gingrich has been throwing everything he has at Romney. Romney has been debating constantly and occasionally has made grave errors. Republicans have feared that their candidates are tearing each other down and so weakening the eventual candidate for the contest to come. What if they are right? If a tie with Obama is Romney's low point, he can start measuring drapes for the White House. Bear in mind that the national polls showing a tie are sampling registered voters, not likely voters. Generally Republicans do better when likely voters are sampled and those are the voters that count.

I am carrying no water for Mitt Romney. I have predicted he will be the Republican nominee and I haven't changed my mind. I make no predictions regarding the outcome. Looking at the situation right now, it does look like we have the makings for a real contest this November.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Raymond Tallis, emeritus professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester, has emerged as one of the most thoughtful critics of attempts by Darwinists and neuroscientists to explain the human being. I have been reading his review essay in The New Atlantis of David Chalmers new book: The Character of Consciousness (2010).

Here is Tallis' statement of Chalmers most important contribution to the philosophy of mind:

It was as the clarifier of questions that David Chalmers made his initial reputation. It was he who first proposed the now-standard distinction between the "easy" and the "hard" problems of consciousness. The easy problems are "those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms," while the paradigmatic hard problem is "the problem of experience." An organism possesses the trait of experience when we can say that it is like something to be that organism, as Thomas Nagel put it. This is true most notably and most elaborately of organisms like you and me; it is also probably true of most vertebrate animals, but probably not true of any plants.

The easy problem models human consciousness in functional terms. As a radar screen continually recreates a map of objects moving in the air at a distance, so an individual's consciousness continually recreates a map of the world around that person. I am here, in front of me is an obstacle I must walk around to reach the door, and over there is the door by which I can exit the room.

Taking this approach, science can say a lot about what is going on. Information is gathered through the senses, carried by means of electro-chemical wiring, and is processed in various dedicated regions of the brain. That's the input. The output is behavior. Darwinian theory can then produce models of the evolution of such a functional mind. As a spider must see in three dimensions in order to acquire its prey, so our ancestors had to map a course around obstacles in order to seize prey and avoid predators.

The hard problem is this: why do we have to be consciously aware in order to function? A radar screen doesn't have to feel anything to do its job. If you point out that radar screens are operated by conscious human beings, I reply that this isn't necessary. One could easily imagine a computer operated airport control tower. Why are we consciously aware whereas the computer is not? That's a good question for Darwinists. How does conscious awareness happen in the human brain? That's a very good question for neuroscientists.

Tallis thinks that Chalmers puts way too much on the easy side of the ledger. Is information really information if it exists only in an array of neurons or marks on a sheet of map paper? Perhaps it is only information when it is part of a human awareness?

I haven't digested Tallis' critique well enough to respond to him directly, but I will add some thoughts I have been mulling over for a long time. I think that free will (something that Tallis is very concerned about) is the same thing as consciousness. To be conscious is to step back into (or carve out) a space between cause and effect. The conscious being can do what my dad frequently advised me to do when I was a child: stop and think. A being who can consciously reflect on information gathered from the environment and then respond in flexible and unpredictable ways may well be a more successful being in Darwinian terms.

That I am right is indicated by one of the features of human consciousness (an presumably some animal consciousness) that genuinely distinguishes it from the merely functional mind that is operated by automatons. Human experience is marked by pain and pleasure, happy and unhappy passions. So far as we can tell, no wind-up toy ever had a bad day or was hurt or disappointed. Can Darwinian theory account for the pain and pleasure?

I say yes. If consciousness arises through Darwinian mechanics because a conscious creature is genuinely free to some degree, about to respond in a genuinely flexible and unpredictable ways, a problem emerges. Unconscious creatures (like bacteria, presumably) pursue their Darwinian goals automatically. Natural selection adjusts the behavior of the bacterial species to meet its environment automatically.

A creature that is genuinely free cannot be governed that way. If a free creature is to pursue its Darwinian imperatives (and so continue to exist as a species) it cannot be merely scripted to behave in an appropriate way. It has to be bribed. It does what it has to do to survive and reproduce not automatically, but because it feels good to so and bad to do otherwise.

If I am right about all this, then human beings are genuinely free in a way that simpler organisms, let alone inorganic objects, are not. That is a fundamental position in philosophy. A second consequence is that inorganic matter has potential dimensions that visible only to biology and the human sciences. The human body consists of organs, which consist of cells, which consist of molecules. That simple fact worries a lot of people. Are we merely the sum of our molecular constituents and their actions? That view is reductionism.

Apparently, those molecular constituents have a potential for wondrous things beyond the imagination of all previous physics. It is not what we can be reduced to that is important. It is what surprises were hidden in the simplest elements that make for a soul.

Professor Jon Schaff and I continue to appear on our NSU TV show, Spotlight@Northern. You can watch the show on Channel 12 in the local market. I will post a link when the show is available online.

Our guest this past week was Peter Carrels, who is a regional representative for the Sierra Club. I have known Pete for a long time. He is a very intelligent, very well-informed, and serious proponent of environmentalism. He also knows more about the James River than the James River does.

In our show, Pete mostly discusses the Hyperion oil refinery project. He does most the talking, so the show is interesting. Let me know what you think.

We are attempting to arrange an interview with another, equally interesting guest: Ron Bailey, the science correspondent at Reason magazine. If we can iron out the technical difficulties of remote interviewing, this should be a heck of a show. Keep a lookout.

Friday, January 27, 2012

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama briefly mentioned America’s struggle to compete with China. He claimed that American workers were “the most productive in the world” and that, on a level playing field, America would always win.

He said he was establishing a task force to uncover the ways in which China was trading unfairly. But the playing field is not level, American workers are not, in fact, the most productive workers in the world and we already know how China is playing unfairly.

What we really need is a plan to address the problems we already know exist. In thisNew York Times article, writers Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher leave their readers asking the question I wish the president had addressed. That is “How can the United States compete in trade with nations who have less restrictive labor laws and little concern for human rights?”

Currently, it is cheaper for companies like Apple to outsource jobs to places like China. It isn’t hard to see why. Chinese companies do not have the same labor laws as we do and they do not place the same value on human rights. So companies can demand longer hours from overseas workers, without offering greater compensation. Or, as Duhigg and Bradsher put it:

Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Ok. But where does that flexibility and diligence come from? Conditions like these:

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

Well, maybe that’s not so bad. Maybe American workers are too pampered. Maybe cutting down on breaks would be good for productivity. It’s not like anyone’s really getting hurt. Except that they are. Consider this event, covered in a follow up article, once again, by the New York Times:

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

This is horrifying. But, as one Apple executive in the Times story puts it “The speed and flexibility is breathtaking. There’s no American plant that can match that.” He is right. If American companies treat their employees well, they probably cannot compete with Chinese factories in terms of speed and flexibility.

So if Americans want to bring jobs back to America, they face a difficult choice. We can either or do away with our current labor laws and allow American companies to treat their workers poorly or we can start restricting trade and penalizing companies who choose to bring their manufacturing operations to China.

From where I sit, the first option is unthinkable. But the second comes with its own negative consequences. It would probably mean that consumers would have to pay significantly more for items they are used to buying relatively cheaply. That might mean less consumption and less spending when the economy is already suffering. Production of many items would become slower. Many businesses that operate overseas might end up having to close their doors. And if Americans take back their manufacturing jobs; workers in China would lose their sources of income. I am probably overlooking a number of factors here, but this, I think, is the problem that really needs a solution.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

One can hardly blame the President for turning the State of the Union address into another campaign speech. It is what you expect from any President seeking reelection. One might wonder what it means that this speech is very similar to the one he gave a year ago. Perhaps campaigning is all he has ever known how to do.

Nor can one blame the President for barely mentioning his signature legislative achievement: health care reform. It remains deeply unpopular.

After a rough start to 2011, economic numbers have improved, and Mr. Obama has pushed Congress to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits and outlined an ambitious jobs agenda. But the country's problems are profound. There are 13.1 million unemployed, and the risk of stagnation is real. Republican candidates are pounding on the wrong, but seductive, notion that the real problem is government spending — especially on the "others," the poor and minorities. Congressional Republicans have barely wavered in their obstructionism…

Mr. Obama's idea to use half of the savings from winding down the wars for public-works projects is laudable and could put hundreds of thousands back to work. Republicans are sure to insist that the money be used for deficit reduction, setting up another battle to simply do the obviously right thing.

The only thing the Times is afraid of is the possibility that spending might actually be reduced. Those who call for deficit reduction are just standing in the way of simply doing "the obvious right thing."

Once again Mr. Obama slighted the threat that the federal deficit poses to the growth he said he wants. As with last year's State of the Union speech, when he relegated the debt to a near-aside late in the speech, Mr. Obama did not go beyond a rhetorical nod to the issue. Indeed, in arguing for increased investment in U.S. infrastructure — a worthy idea — Mr. Obama gave up on the traditional approach of paying with an increase in the gasoline tax or similar user fees. Instead, he relied on the dodge of "paying for" those costs by using some of the savings from winding down operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The administration is right to be frustrated by congressional unwillingness to consider real pay-fors, but wrong to respond with a measure that would just make the deficit worse.

Let's take another look at what the WaPo is talking about.

That dotted line is what the President and his New York Times are resolutely ignoring. It is based on the President's own budget of last February. In other words, that is not what happens if his plan fails. That's his plan.

In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead. The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours…

In our economic stagnation and indebtedness, we are only a short distance behind Greece, Spain, and other European countries now facing economic catastrophe. But ours is a fortunate land. Because the world uses our dollar for trade, we have a short grace period to deal with our dangers. But time is running out, if we are to avoid the fate of Europe, and those once-great nations of history that fell from the position of world leadership.

I have a hard time forgiving Mitch Daniels for not putting his hat in the Republican ring. He has at least reminded listeners of what the President choses to forget. The WaPo has this:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, delivering the Republican rebuttal, had the fiscal question right when he said: "If we drift, quarreling and paralyzed, over a Niagara of debt, we will all suffer, regardless of income, race, gender, or other category." But his eloquence is undercut by his party's refusal, far more doctrinaire than Mr. Obama's, to entertain responsible proposals to pay for the nation's needs.

I happen to think that that is fair. The President's problem on the fiscal question isn't that he is doctrinaire; it is that he is consistently missing in action.

We can be reasonably certain that the President will continue to ignore the real problem for four more years if he gets four more years. The Democrats in Congress will continue to enable him if they hold on to the Senate. The day after the President's speech marked the 1,000th day since the Senate passed a budget.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

I confess that I have been peddling a lot of doom and gloom about the fiscal problems facing the Federal Government and most of the state governments. I don't think I was wrong to do so, but it's time to look at the brighter side of the ledger.

Growth in shale oil and gas supplies, along with other fuel sources, will make the western hemisphere virtually self-sufficient in energy by 2030, according to a BP summary published as an overview accompanying BP's latest energy outlook.

In a development with enormous geopolitical implications, a large swath of the world taking in North and South America would see its dependence on oil imports from potentially volatile countries in the Middle East and elsewhere disappear, BP said, although Britain and western Europe would still need Gulf supplies.

Cory Heidelberger celebrates this on his blog because he thinks it serves his great animosity against the Keystone XL pipeline. See! We don't need Keystone! I note that the BP study includes shale oil among the reasons that North America is moving toward energy sufficiency. Cory is still worried that our oil might go to those Godless communists in China. I will point out once again that refining oil here and selling it abroad when we don't need it hear makes the U.S. richer, which is a very good thing. Producing and selling a surplus is how nations, corporations, and individuals prosper. On this subject, Cory is invincibly ignorant.

Second, Drezner points out that American manufacturing is poised for a rebound. Productivity, which is the prime source of wealth, has been steadily improving and unit costs of labor have declined.

As Michael Beckley points out in a new article in International Security, "The United States is not in decline; in fact, it is now wealthier, more innovative, and more militarily powerful compared to China than it was in 1991."

That should cheer Cory up.

Finally, the United States is doing a better job of deleveraging (that is, reducing debt) than most of the other developed economies. Powerline fleshes out some of the implications of a McKinsey Global Institute report that Drezner discusses.

McKinsey Global Institute has produced an interesting report on international debt and deleveraging. It finds that a few of the world's largest economies, including the U.S., have made significant progress in reducing debt since the second quarter of 2008, while others, mostly in the EU, have continued amassing more debt.

What the McKinsey study shows is that U.S. financial institutions, non-financial corporations, and households, have succeeded in substantial reductions in debt. That is very good news as these are the sources of wealth for all private and public enterprises.

Energy security, resurgent manufacturing, and reductions in private debt, make for a pretty picture. This means that the U.S. continues to be, not only the largest, but also the most flexible, responsive, and productive economy on the globe. That means that we will probably be able to solve our most serious problem.

When you add in the enormous fiscal difficulties facing our entitlement system, public institutions are not deleveraging. Federal and state governments are still on the road to fiscal insolvency. Here is a quote from a very long memo produced by Larry Summers for President-elect Barack Obama in December, 2008. From James Pethokoukis's blog at the American Enterprise Institute:

Closing the gap between what the campaign proposed and the estimates of the campaign offsets would require scaling back proposals by about $100 billion annually or adding new offsets totaling the same. Even this, however, would leave an average deficit over the next decade that would be worse than any post-World War II decade. This would be entirely unsustainable and could cause serious economic problems in the both the short run and the long run.

Four years ago Obama was warned by the soon to be head of his National Economic Council that the national debt was growing out of control. He has made not a single serious attempt to address the problem. The same can be said of the Democrats in Congress. Tomorrow marks the 1,000th day since the U.S. Senate has produced a budget.

The United States of America continues to be the most successful regime in recorded history. Our people and our institutions continue to show that the Founder's work was sound. We can only wait for Congress and the White House, perhaps under new management, to bring up the rear.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

The rollercoaster ride Republicans were on in the weeks before Iowa ain't over yet. Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary by a margin the size of Chris Christie.

Newt Gingrich

40%

Mitt Romney

28%

Rick Santorum

17%

Ron Paul

13%

This tells us that Newt is a far more serious candidate than the Press wants acknowledge. It also tells us something we already knew about the Republican electorate.

Like the Democratic electorate in 2008, Republicans are divided between those whose desire to win is greater than their desire for authenticity in a candidate and those whose priorities are the opposite. In 2008, Senator Clinton looked like the safe candidate and Senator Obama the authentic one. In one of those ironies of politics, they went with Obama and won the White House only to find out that authenticity is easier to put on a poster than to translate into policy.

Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul all offer various brands of authenticity. For any number of reasons, Paul is doomed to be a marginal candidate. What Gingrich has that Santorum does not is belligerence and utter fearlessness. He doesn't care what the media thinks and he isn't afraid to challenge anyone and everyone who he thinks deserves it.

If Gingrich had had the discipline to do what Romney did, carefully build his organization state by state over the last four years, and if (very big if) he managed to avoid shooting himself off the platform, he would very probably be the Republican nominee. As it is, it is hard to see how Gingrich can sustain his South Carolina momentum. He won't even be on the ballot in Virginia. If I was betting I'd still bet on Romney, but I won't wager much.

Michael Barone is reporting that turnout was way up in South Carolina. If that holds, it reverses the trend in Iowa and New Hampshire. Newt can claim to be the candidate who generates enthusiasm.

Romney won three counties: Richland (Columbia), Charleston, and Beaufort (Hilton Head Island). That tells you that Romney does better among establishment Republicans.

CNN reports the exit polls. Gingrich won both among women and men, the latter by a slightly larger margin. He won decisively among older voters. Ron Paul won the under 29 vote. He won self-described Republicans by a wider margin and also independents, but by a narrower margin. Romney won self-described moderate or liberal voters.

There is no doubt that Gingrich is the kind of candidate who can generate enthusiasm in the Republican ranks. Romney surely looks like the kind of candidate who can have a broader appeal. He is also the kind of candidate that Republicans usually nominate.

I still have grave doubts that Newt Gingrich has the character needed to win the nomination, let alone to be President. I am not inspired by Mitt Romney. I do think he is a pretty typical specimen of a Republican presidential candidate. The Press, for obvious reasons, treats each contest at this point as a message from the Almighty. I won't indulge in that tendency. Nothing much is yet known.

I wish that the Republican candidates would focus more on the real question facing the nation. We are on the road to financial insolvency. The man in the White House doesn't seem to be aware of that fact. It would be good to know that whoever might replace is aware of it.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin announced today that she will not try to regain her house seat this year. This doesn't strike me as surprising. From the Rapid City Journal:

The former congresswoman said she wants to spend more time with her family, including her child Zachary, 3. Herseth Sandlin also said she wants to focus on her professional career as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., where she said she is enjoying "working on some of the same issues that motivated me to seek office in the first place."

I am guessing that her current job is rather more lucrative than a Congressional seat. It is also very likely a lot more flexible. I was able to spend a lot of time with my daughter when she was three, but not so much time with my son at the same age. I know with bitter certainty that you never get one minute of time back.

Trying to unseat Kristi Noem must also have looked like a long shot. I see no general trends or specific vulnerabilities that make Noem look beatable. Still, if anyone could have given Noem a run for her money, it would have been SHS.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Congresswoman Herseth-Sandlin along with my colleague Jon Schaff on our NSU TV show, Spotlight@Northern. She is very bright and she is a talented politician. South Dakota needs a viable Democratic Party. SHS has been one of the Democrats' most bankable assets. They should hope that they can reinvest that asset in the future.

If trends turn against the Republicans, Herseth Sandlin could well make a return. If Tim Johnson retires at the end of his term, she might be enlisted to run for the Senate seat. If Noem should vacate her House seat to run for Senate or for some other reason, SHS might throw her hat in the ring for the House or Senate seats.

As it is, I rather doubt that the House race in South Dakota this year will be much of a contest and that is unfortunate. A real contest is good for the state and for the nation. It would also dramatically increase my chances of getting interviewed by CNN or, dare I imagine it, Fox News.

I like Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and I wish her well. I can hardly blame her for sitting this one out. If I were a Democrat, I would very much hope that she is planning a return to politics in the future.

It would be unfair to say that the President's decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline means that the Administration has no policy. In fact, it has at least two. Unfortunately, they are at odds with one another. The Washington Post editorial is devastating.

ON TUESDAY, President Obama's Jobs Council reminded the nation that it is still hooked on fossil fuels, and will be for a long time. "Continuing to deliver inexpensive and reliable energy," the council reported, "is going to require the United States to optimize all of its natural resources and construct pathways (pipelines, transmission and distribution) to deliver electricity and fuel."

It added that regulatory "and permitting obstacles that could threaten the development of some energy projects, negatively impact jobs and weaken our energy infrastructure need to be addressed."

Mr. Obama's Jobs Council could start by calling out ... the Obama administration.

The Obama Administration's decision to shelve Keystone XL is an example of the obstacles to an effective energy policy that we are warned about by… the Obama Administration.

We almost hope this was a political call because, on the substance, there should be no question. Without the pipeline, Canada would still export its bitumen — with long-term trends in the global market, it's far too valuable to keep in the ground — but it would go to China. And, as a State Department report found, U.S. refineries would still import low-quality crude — just from the Middle East. Stopping the pipeline, then, wouldn't do anything to reduce global warming, but it would almost certainly require more oil to be transported across oceans in tankers.

Environmentalists and Nebraska politicians say that the route TransCanada proposed might threaten the state's ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region. But TransCanada has been willing to tweak the route, in consultation with Nebraska officials, even though a government analysis last year concluded that the original one would have "limited adverse environmental impacts." Surely the Obama administration didn't have to declare the whole project contrary to the national interest — that's the standard State was supposed to apply — and force the company to start all over again.

Environmentalists go on to argue that some of the fuel U.S. refineries produce from Canada's bitumen might be exported elsewhere. But even if that's true, why force those refineries to obtain their crude from farther away? Anti-Keystone activists insist that building the pipeline will raise gas prices in the Midwest. But shouldn't environmentalists want that? Finally, pipeline skeptics dispute the estimates of the number of jobs that the project would create. But, clearly, constructing the pipeline would still result in job gains during a sluggish economic recovery.

Yes. If Keystone isn't built, that will not mean less oil refined on the American side of the Gulf of Mexico, it will mean that the oil comes from the Middle East in tankers. It will not mean that the oil in the Canadian tar sands will not be extracted. It just means that will have to go west rather than south. Does anyone think that the Chinese will be more environmentally scrupulous in refining the oil than our own refineries would be? Will it be better for Canada's forests if a longer pipeline is cut to the West than to the South? Stopping Keystone pays no environmental benefits.

The most popular argument against Keystone is that the oil imported from Canada and refined on the Gulf Coast will shipped to China and so does not benefit the U.S. This is stupid and economically ignorant in equal portions. It's stupid because the oil will go to China anyway. It is economically ignorant because it ignores the fact that adding value to a raw material is the chief source of wealth in modern economies. Oil refined here will be refined by American workers and the profits will be taxed by American governments. Important raw materials and refining them is how nations prosper.

The Administration's claim that the project was contrary to American National Interests is utter nonsense. It would give us another source of oil close to our borders and easy to defend. It would increase our ties with our northern neighbor. The project has already been vetted for several years. The decision to halt the project was not based on any new finding. It was based solely on election strategy.

The Republicans tried to force the President's hand by tying the Keystone decision to the payroll tax bill. To some degree they succeeded. Both sides will have the issue to use in the coming Presidential campaign. They did not, however, force the President to make any final decision. He insisted that his decision did not reflect a judgment on the project, only a judgment on those bad Republicans who tried to make him make up his mind. That leaves him free to reverse his decision as soon as he is safely reelected.

He will almost certainly do that, if he gets reelected. We aren't really going to sit idly by while Canada builds a pipeline to their western coast. Of course we can wait until Barack Obama is forced to make a decision, or we can replace him with someone, anyone, who is not so resistant to reality and who really cares about national policy.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

I had lunch at the Ward Hotel this afternoon with a small group of people. The one thing everyone was talking about as we arrived was the Great Blackout. I am guessing anyone who reads this blog knows all about it, but just in case here is the meat from the WaPo:

Visitors to Wikipedia who tried to search the online encyclopedia's usually trivia-filled pages were instead greeted by a message informing them that the bills could "fatally damage the free and open Internet." On Craigslist, those looking to search the classifieds had to first read through a note urging them to contact their representatives to block the bills. And while you could still run searches on Google, a black censorship bar blocked the area where a cheery Google Doodle logo normally resides.

The blackout was a response to two bills before Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act. SOPA an PIPA were pushed on behalf of the major content providers in the film and music industries. Here is a summary of SOPA from OpenCongress.org:

This bill would establish a system for taking down websites that the Justice Department determines to be dedicated to copyright infringment. The DoJ or the copyright owner would be able to commence a legal action against any site they deem to have "only limited purpose or use other than infringement," and the DoJ would be allowed to demand that search engines, social networking sites and domain name services block access to the targeted site. It would also make unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony with a possible penalty up to five years in prison.

This is the kind of bill that usually sails through due to public inattention. Unfortunately for industries pushing the bill the industries targeted by the bill have immediate access to millions of people and man oh man did they ever use it.

The President was already signaling opposition to the bills before the blackout. Today, a number of Congressmen have withdrawn their support. It looks like we have a dramatic case of public opposition killing a bill dead.

SOPA and PIPA addressed a real problem. Until the advent of the Web, audio and video content, like literary content, were generally fixed in some physical medium. Content providers offered films and music but they sold records, tapes, and then discs. Content distributed over the airwaves was another problem, but that was easily solved by selling advertising. It was relatively easy to copy copyrighted media; however, it was expensive to do so on a big scale and difficult to distribute it. This protected the content providers.

The Web makes it easy to exchange audio and video content without an exchange of physical media, and that includes pirated content. How big a problem this is isn't so clear. See Julian Sanchez at CATO.

On the other hand, the internet has made possible the greatest explosion of information and access in human history. When I first arrived in Aberdeen in 1989 I could get only two national newspapers on the day they were published. Now I can read the Jerusalem Post every morning. I have at my fingertips, literally, a vast reservoir of books, documents, paintings, along with music and film. I have a strong personal interest in keeping the internet as free as possible.

Fortunately for me, I have powerful allies who have managed to establish commercial empires in cyberspace. Google had 187 million unique visitors in December. Wikimedia and Craigslist have about 83 million and 50 million respectively. That is the kind of power that can be brought to bear on Congress. These corporations see SOPA and PIPA as mortal threats to their business. They are right to see it that way. Expecting them to police copyright would drastically constrict the freedom of access that they offer.

The music industry is often its own worst enemy. I have maintained a jazz blog for several years: Jazz Note SDP. What I have wanted to do is encourage my readers to buy the jazz I love. The most effective way to do that is to comment on jazz and then provide samples. Current law makes this almost impossible. Today I maintain a Live365 jazz radio station, JazzNoteNSU. This is scrupulously legal, but the station plays about ten hours of jazz continuously in random order. I am legally prohibited from providing a playlist. That means that readers of the blog cannot know when a particular music I am commenting on will play. I would like to sell jazz for the labels free of charge, but Congress won't let me.

The demise of SOPA et PIPA, if indeed that is what has occurred, is a triumph for the internet industries. It is also a triumph for informal democracy. The only power that Google really wields is the power of its nearly two hundred million a month users. That is power indeed.

Monday, January 16, 2012

I wonder: is there room for abuse under this ruling? Does this ruling give churches cover to declare every one of their employees "ministerial" and thus remove their anti-discrimination protections? Couldn't I start the Church of Cory and declare that every person I hire, from my music director and theological research assistant down to my church bike rack polisher is in a position to represent and preach the Gospel of Cory to our congregants and seekers of truth? And then when I hear the janitor mention that he agrees with Ken Blanchard on Obama's lack of leadership, Boom! Fired!

There is certainly a potential for abuse of free exercise claims. Prison inmates have frequently sued for special privileges under the clause. Does a prison have to provide an inmate with fine French wine and steak because God told him that was holy? What about pot for a Rastafarian? So far, Courts have tried to distinguish genuine and reasonable claims from other claims.

Could Microsoft declare itself The Church of Gates, ordain all its employees, and so gain immunity from employment discrimination laws? Well, there is a Church of Satan. The biggest problem I see with the ministerial exception is that it seems to require the state to distinguish between genuine and bogus churches. That seems to me to violate the Establishment Clause. Just at this moment, I am not sure how to resolve this problem, but happily, it is as yet only a hypothetical.

Cory wants to hold on to the Court's apparent reserves in this case.

Thanks for pointing out the "called" aspect of the woman's employment. When phrased as a question of churches being able to decide who gets to serve as their own clergy, I can see the wisdom of the ruling. Extending it to gardeners and other secular(?) employees is a step too far.

The Court took very seriously the distinction between lay teachers and called teachers at the Hosanna-Tabor school. Called teachers are ministers of the church. Lay teachers need not even be Lutherans. The Court leaves open the possibility that the respondent in Hosanna-Tabor Church and School v. EEOC might have had a claim if she had been a lay teacher.

However, the Court does seem to think that the Church has pretty carte blanch to decide who is a minister and who isn't. Let's take the gardener example. Would a groundskeeper be a secular employee or a minister? That would depend on how seriously the church takes gardening. Are their religious statues on the grounds and do they have to be treated according to ceremonial rules? Many religions are strict about these things. A person who enters a Zendo (Zen Buddhist meditation room) has to enter with the left foot first and bow. That might apply to the custodian. You see the problem. If there is a distinction between lay and ministerial employees in this doctrine, it has to be up to the church to decide which is which and whether there are any of one or the other. A church might decide that all paid employees are ministerial in function.

Even Hosanna-Tabor doesn't seem completely cut and dried. It doesn't seem that Perich was fired for any religious reason. I can accept a church firing a gay pastor on the basis of their reading of scripture saying homosexuals can't be pastors. That's free exercise of religion. But was Hosanna-Tabor really exercising religion, or were they just mad at Perich for making having narcolepsy and making a stink? If that's the case, did the court wrongly apply "free exercise"... or is this firing like Fred Phelps shouting "God hates fags": one of the unpleasant but perfectly constitutional acts that we accept as a price of a strong First Amendment?

It seems pretty clear in Hosanna-Tabor that the respondent was fired not because she couldn't do her job but because she was, as Cory puts it, "making a stink". Cory seems to suggest that the Court could have taken the religious school's motives for firing Perich into account and accordingly could have refused to recognize a ministerial exception for the school.

The problem with that is that it would make the Court and therewith the state an arbiter in Church politics. This would run afoul of another doctrine of the Court. In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), the Court ruled that the State of Pennsylvania could not reimburse religious schools for the salaries of teachers who taught secular subjects. To avoid an Establishment Clause violation, the state would have to make absolutely sure that the activities it was funding were purely secular. That would require an "excessive entanglement."

A comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing state surveillance will inevitably be required to ensure that these restrictions are obeyed and the First Amendment otherwise respected. Unlike a book, a teacher cannot be inspected once so as to determine the extent and intent of his or her personal beliefs and subjective acceptance of the limitations imposed by the First Amendment. These prophylactic contacts will involve excessive and enduring entanglement between state and church.

If it is "excessive entanglement" of church and state for the state to determine whether a nun teaching algebra is just teaching algebra and not somehow preaching on the public dime, then certainly it is excessive entanglement for the Court to determine whether Hosanna-Tabor school fired Ms. Perich for religious reasons or for some other motive.

There are, no doubt, serious problems here yet to be resolved. This much seems clear: religious institutions can ordain or defrock and hire or fire whoever they choose. I am grateful to Mr. Heidelberger for his thought provoking comment.

Respondent Cheryl Perich was employed as a "called" teacher by Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran School. Called teachers are recognized as "ministers of religion" and can teach religious classes. Ms. Perich took disability leave due to an illness (narcolepsy). When she notified the school that she would soon be able to resume her duties, she was informed that she had been replaced and was offered a settlement in return for resigning from her post. She refused.

The first day she was medically cleared to return to work-Perich presented herself at the school. [The school principal, Stacey] Hoeft asked her to leave but she would not do so until she obtained written documentation that she had reported to work. Later that afternoon, Hoeft called Perich at home and told her that she would likely be fired. Perich responded that she had spoken with an attorney and intended to assert her legal rights.

Following a school board meeting that evening, board chairman Scott Salo sent Perich a letter stating that Hosanna-Tabor was reviewing the process for rescinding her call in light of her "regrettable" actions. Salo subsequently followed up with a letter advising Perich that the congregation would consider whether to rescind her call at its next meeting. As grounds for termination, the letter cited Perich's "insubordination and disruptive behavior" on February 22, as well as the damage she had done to her "working relationship" with the school by "threatening to take legal action." Id., at 55. The congregation voted to rescind Perich's call on April 10, and Hosanna-Tabor sent her a letter of termination the next day.

Perich filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that her employment had been terminated in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment bar suits brought on behalf of ministers against their churches, claiming termination in violation of employment discrimination laws. Moreover, because the respondent in this case was a minister within the meaning of the ministerial exception, the First Amendment requires dismissal of her employment discrimination suit against her religious employer.

This is a fine example of two forms of liberty in collision: freedom from discrimination in employment and free exercise of religion. The Court was certainly right to uphold the latter over the former in this case.

One of the fundamental aspects of religious liberty is the liberty to form a church and to organize it according to shared principles of faith without interference from the state. If the state could say who a church can or must ordain or who a church can or must defrock, that liberty would be destroyed. For that reason, the Court recognized a "ministerial exception" to employment discrimination laws.

Suppose, for example, a group of Native Americans organize a church (I use the term in the widest possible sense) around traditional native religious beliefs. Suppose that among those beliefs is that only members of a recognized tribe can belong to the church or serve it in any capacity including all paid positions. I hold that they would be well within their rights to do so. If I were able to sue their church on the grounds that they are discriminating against me by refusing to consider me for employment precisely because I am not a tribal member, that would be destructive of their rights under the Free Exercise Clause.

I gather that the Court was not willing to go as far as Justice Thomas. It might still be possible for me to sue if was employed by the church as a gardener with no religious duties. J. Thomas would bar that as well. However, the Court does seem to recognize that a church has complete authority to decide who is a minister or has a religiously important job. That probably means that their holding is as extensive as Thomas would have it in all practical effect.

On Slate's Political Gabfest, Emily Bazelon wondered whether the ruling in Hosanna-Tabor comes in conflict with the ruling in Smith. In the latter case, the court held that a law restricting a religious practice could survive free exercise scrutiny so long as it had a valid secular purpose and was generally applicable to persons regardless of religious identity.

Though interesting, the question is not difficult. The decision in H-T is narrowly targeted to employment discrimination laws. The Free Exercise Clause does not give persons a general immunity to the laws. It certainly does not allow a church to do whatever it wants to do to its members or clergy. Human sacrifice is still illegal as is female circumcision. Churches cannot arbitrarily seize the property of their members or imprison them, etc.

The free exercise of religion is among the most fundamental liberties protected by the Constitution. The Court was right to protect it in this case.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

The President likes to talk about green energy and green jobs. Here is a clip from Mr. Obama on the campaign trail in 2008.

Well, whatever campaign promises he might have forgotten, this isn't one of them. The President did aggressively push investment in green energy. CBS has taken a good look at how this is turning out.

It is altogether possible that there are green technologies worth investing in. It is altogether clear that the Administration is very poorly suited to pick those technologies out. Probably this would be true of any Administration. Federal agencies do not make good venture capitalists. The distance between dreams that make for good sound bites and economic reality is cavernous. The temptation to feather the nests of political supporters at the expense of real opportunities is irresistible.

This is clear in CBS's story. The Energy Department repeatedly approved investment in projects that they knew were unsound. They repeatedly ignored all the sober warnings. They put the public money where no idiot would have put it. It is scarcely any wonder that no one from the Energy Department would appear for an interview. What could they possibly say? Only this: that they still believe in what they were doing.

The Green Jobs agenda is not just a waste of public money, at a time when public money is measured in negative numbers. It distorts the market, robbing any potentially viable startups of vital capital. When billions of Federal dollars become low hanging fruit, venture technology chases that fruit instead of trying to find a sustainable business model.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

If you want to gage how far we are from fiscal sanity, you need only look to the California High Speed Rail Authority. It is emblematic of modern government, perhaps, to have a transportation bureaucracy for a form of transportation that doesn't exist and isn't going to exist.

The CHSR (let's pronounce it CHESS-RAY) has an optimistic trip-planner. It promises that, once the bullet train is running, you'll be able to travel between Los Angeles and Fresno in an hour and a half and save 191 pounds of carbon emissions on the trip. Flatulence aside, does anyone in LA really want to go to Fresno? I note that the trip planner has "visualizations" that not only show the bullet train racing along imaginary track, but also show buildings rising magically around the station. They aren't wasting public money on graphics.

Thanks to federal policy, if California does not start work on the rail line by Sept. 30, it will lose an additional $3.3 billion in federal money — possibly dooming the system.

But the Catch-22 is that, if California does start building without securing future funding, it could end up with a $6 billion track to nowhere. As the Peer Review Group (PRG) explains, that's because, for economic-stimulus reasons, Washington insisted that California build the initial stretch between two outposts in the lightly populated San Joaquin Valley.

In other words, without any guarantee that massive funds will be available to complete the project, the Federal Government has put pressure on California to start building the project this year. I am guessing that the snazzy CHESS-RAY logo doesn't count. At the same time, it is compelling California to begin by linking "outposts" in the San Joaquin Valley. Okay, so for $6 billion, you'll be able to get from nowhere to nowhere, mighty fast. After that, maybe, more gold plated track will be laid.

In a scathing critique that could further jeopardize political support for California's proposed $98.5-billion bullet train, a key independent review panel is recommending that state officials postpone borrowing billions of dollars to start building the first section of track this year.

In a report Tuesday, [The California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group] created by state law to help safeguard the public's interest raised serious doubts about almost every aspect of the project and concluded that the current plan "is not financially feasible." As a result, the panel said, it "cannot at this time recommend that the Legislature approve the appropriation of bond proceeds for this project."

Although the panel has no legal power to stop the project, its strong criticism, coupled with recent polls showing public opinion has shifted against the proposal, is giving some key political leaders pause.

Governor Jerry Brown is in no mood to let the public's interest or public opinion put a damper on the project. As Lane puts it:

To Brown, the warnings lose validity through repetition. The PRG report "does not appear to add any arguments that are new or compelling enough to suggest a change of course," his spokesman said.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who has declared that "we will not be dissuaded by the naysayers and the critics," told me to discount the PRG report.

The Obama administration vowed [last month] at a House committee meeting in Washington that it would not back down from its support of California's bullet train project despite attacks from critics who alleged it is tainted by political corruption.

Of course, there is also the consideration that California is facing a fiscal crisis from which even a sober and responsible government would have trouble rescuing it. To put it mildly, the U.S. as a whole is in the same situation. Yet Governor Jerry Brown and President Barack Obama want to invest billions in a bullet train that would link two places where cows outnumber people.

2. We leave 45 million Americans without health insurance. The European Union enjoys nearly universal coverage.

3. For all of our extra spending, America and Europe have nearly identical life expectancies, and Europe keeps more babies from dying.

The U.S. does spend more on health care than Europe. Ah, but we don't get anything for that extra cash! Our life expectancy is equal to Europe, we are now informed.

Okay, but isn't that odd? We do have a lot of people without health insurance, while the Europeans have universal coverage. If covering more people with health insurance really led to better health, wouldn't you expect a significantly higher life expectancy in Europe? Cory has been telling us over and over that a single payer health system like Canada's would save lives. Now he suddenly confesses that it does not. I have pointed out before that the connection between greater health insurance coverage and, well, health, is dubious. It's nice to see Cory coming around.

What do Americans get for that extra 6% of a much bigger GDP that we spend on health care? A lot of waste, to be certain. We also don't have to wait months or years for routine surgery, as one must do in Canada. Three days ago I decided to see a doctor about my right little toe which is hurting. Feel for me. I saw him today. In Canada, no doubt, my toe would be up for retirement before it got any attention.

Cory's statement that "Europe keeps more babies from dying" is wrong in every important sense. It's true that infant mortality rates are higher in the U.S. than in Europe. However, the IMR counts deaths in the first year after birth. The U.S. spends a lot more on heroic efforts to save infants before they are born, resulting in a higher rate of infants born prematurely or otherwise in critical condition. A lot of those children don't make it through their first year. Our higher IMR is a result of the fact that we spend more saving babies.

We also spend a fortune on medical procedures that marginally extend the lives of the elderly. Most European nations don't. You could well argue that the money spent on folks at either ends of their life spans is money poorly spent. It would be well to know what we are giving up to be more like Europe.

Finally, there is this number:

Europe generates wealth more efficiently. "The U.S. uses about 221 tons of oil equivalent to produce every million dollars of GDP, while the comparable number for Britain is 141, for France 170 and for Germany 164."

Cory's link does not reference a relevant site, so I can't tell where those statistics originate or how they were determined. I do know that they are useless to establish his conclusion. Oil can be used either for production or consumption. You would have to separate the two to tell whether the Europeans use oil more efficiently than we do. I have my doubts.

As for consumption, Americans own more cars and drive them around a lot. How we spend our wealth may be bad, but we have a lot more of it to spend.

The claim that Europe generates wealth more efficiently is a howler. As I pointed out in my last post, America is much wealthier than Europe per capita. That ain't because Daddy left us a pile. It is precisely because our economy generates wealth much more efficiently than Europe's does. Sorry, Cory, Mitt was right.

Sunday, January 08, 2012

My friend and esteemed blogosphere colleague, Cory Heidelberger, thinks that the U.S. should be more like Europe, economically. This may explain why he takes the sovereign debt crisis a lot less seriously than I do. I will confine myself here to the arguments that Cory presents.

The most significant argument concerns economic mobility. Here is Cory's final point:

Europeans enjoy more upward mobility than Americans: "…42% of American men who grew up in households in the bottom fifth of incomes stayed there as adults. The comparable figures for Denmark (25%) and Britain (30%) demonstrate the point."

At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.

The DeParle article provides a helpful chart.

The chart does illustrate the dismal finding that someone born in the bottom quintile is more likely to end up there than is the cased in Demark. Otherwise, the stats are very nearly the same across the board. Danes in the top quintile are as likely to remain there as Americans similarly fortunate. I would note also that in the U.S. as in Demark, most folks do not end up where they began, which is to say that economic mobility is higher than it was for almost all human beings who have ever lived.

The one really significant column on the chart is worth worrying about, but it is important to note that these are matters of relative standing. One could, for example, move up one quintile while actually suffering a loss of income, if the income decline were worse for other sectors.

G.D.P. per capita (an insufficient indicator, but one most economists use) in the U.S. is nearly 50 percent higher than it is in Europe. Even Europe's best-performing large country, Germany, is about 20 percent poorer than the U.S. on a per-person basis (and both countries have roughly 15 percent of their populations living below the poverty line). While Norway and Sweden are richer than the U.S., on average, they are more comparable to wealthy American microeconomies like Washington, D.C., or parts of Connecticut — both of which are actually considerably wealthier. A reporter in Greece once complained after I compared her country to Mississippi, America's poorest state. She's right: the comparison isn't fair. The average Mississippian is richer than the average Greek.

The U.S. generates more wealth per capita than Europe and more than Europe's best-performing nation.

Which problem would you rather have: a significantly better chance of improvement for the lowest quintile of the population when each fifth takes its cut from a diminished pie, or a richer nation overall where folks in the lowest quintile have a harder time getting out? Either problem desperately needs addressing, but I would prefer to address the second one.

In fact, the situation of Europe is much more interesting than Cory imagines.

Just as the U.S. was dismantling much of its welfare system — replacing it with the welfare-to-work reforms of the mid-1990s — Europe was (somewhat nobly) trying to show that an economy can be humane and competitive. In 1994, Denmark modernized a system, which came to be known as "flexicurity," that offered American-style flexibility (layoffs, transitions into new lines of business) coupled with traditional European security. Laid-off workers were offered generous benefits, like 90 percent of their last salary for two years and opportunities to be retrained.

And it worked incredibly well. After Denmark's unemployment rate sank to among the lowest in the world, the flexicurity model spread throughout Europe. It has been successfully implemented, in locally appropriate ways, in Norway, Sweden and Finland. But in other countries — like Germany, France and Spain — similar reforms faced stiff resistance from workers who preferred the old way.

Several countries applied the measures in a two-tier system: people who already had jobs were protected by pretty much the same old rules, while the unemployed — who were often younger — were offered less secure work at lower pay. Greek unions insisted on so much security and so little flexibility that now the country has neither. Flexibility has done little to help Italy, which remains effectively two countries. There is a rich nation in the north where workers earn great salaries in highly productive and competitive industries; many people south of Rome are living in a broken, developing economy that's considerably poorer than Greece.

Maybe we should be more like Denmark, but Denmark owes its relatively successful economic model to a very deliberate attempt to become more like the U.S. Meanwhile other European nations try to solve their problems by continuing to shower benefits on those who have jobs while denying them to those who seek them.

Europe's economy is much less efficient than that of the U.S., and that means less wealth to distribute, however you manage to distribute it. As DeParle notes, four out of five Americans are richer than their parents, something that European nations do not bother even to track. The idea that the European economies are fairer than the U.S. economy is flatly false. North African immigrants to Europe have much higher unemployment rates than the established populations, and much higher than for immigrants to the U.S. Whatever model we should imitate, this isn't it.

I think I just caught a glimpse of what the world must look like to conspiracy theorists. A little while ago I read a chapter from Joseph Heller's Catch 22. Then I sat to watch The King's Speech for a second time. Now I am writing a review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows.

So help me, but all four seemed to be blinking out the same message: all the people actually in charge of everything, everywhere, are either dangerously incompetent or irredeemably corrupt, or they are both. The only hope for justice or even the survival of everything good depends on the emergence of some hero from outside the box.

Catch 22 is novel earns its keep on every page by showing you the same thing over and over: an absurd world created by boundless bureaucratic incompetence. That world is no incoherent. It has a lot of fixed rules and a logic of its own, it's just that the rules make no sense and the logic is self-defeating. The hero in this case may be Yossarian, who is at least capable of recognizing the insanity of the war, or it may be the author and the reader who get to view the absurd from either side. Take your pick.

In The King's Speech, the theater of the absurd is much smaller. It consists of the patient, a man who will be king, and the gaggle of archbishops and incompetent doctors who not only can't cure him but who instinctively draw ranks against the one man who can help the him. Lionel Logue has no letters or training except the experience of actually helping shell shocked soldiers in WWI and stuttering boys in the years between wars. He is the perfect outsider hero.

In Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, the villain Moriarty is steering the world toward a catastrophe from which he expects to profit. The powers that be (excepting Holmes' brother) are powerless even to recognize the threat, let alone do anything about it. Only the unlicensed detective and his almost equally brilliant sidekick (along with a few heroic Gypsies and Mrs. Doctor Watson) can thwart Moriaty's schemes. Of course the joke is that what Moriarty intends to bring about is in fact inevitable; our heroes only manage to make certain that Moriarty won't benefit.

Game of Shadows, like its predecessor, is an exploding barrel of fun. Robert Downy Jr. and Jude Law reprise their Holmes/Watson interpretation exquisitely, once again giving us a stock Hollywood crime fight duo ratcheted up to James Bond velocity without losing the mental battle that is the essence of the Holmes character. No, this isn't your grandfather's Sherlock, but it's fine as modern action cinema goes. I don't think it was quite as good as the first film but it was very nearly as good.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is more serious and a lot grimmer. Here the outsider heroes are a disgraced journalist and a Goth girl with a talent for computer hacking. Together they solve a decades old disappearance that the police were powerless to solve. In this film, it is corruption that is deeply rooted in the Swedish establishment. Wealth, power, and the law all conspire to protect and enable brutal and sometimes lethal misogyny. Only the outsider heroes can get at it.

Daniel Craig is a powerful actor and he does Steig Larson's Mikael Blomkvist justice. He enjoys top billing, however, only for formal reasons. Rooney Mara's Lisbeth Salander is the star of the show. The pierced and tattooed Salander is just to one side or the other of being a sociopath. She is a victim of typical social services mischief, suffering equally from neglect and unwanted attention. Despite her talents as a cyber-outlaw, she is frequently helpless. I should warn you that this is a very brutal film.

Dragon Tattoo is in fact classic noir film making. There are traces of religion in the film, but Blomkvist is offended by his daughter's Biblical faith. He has no faith in anything, neither in the divine nor in any institutions. Salander, of course, can probably not even conceive of faith. That is the essence of the noir: virtuous heroes largely alone in a world without virtue or faith.

The American left used to have faith in European socialism. For those who want to cling to that faith, this is a film to skip. The loss of confidence in modern institutions is ubiquitous. This might mean something and it might be important.

Saturday, January 07, 2012

I can hear KB's keyboard right now. Get ready for "The Man Who Was There" to Make Recess Appointments and lots of mock outrage.

The topic is President Obama's decision to make several "recess appointments" when the Senate was not in fact in recess. I have to disappoint Donald so far as my own outrage (genuine or otherwise) is concerned. I do, however, have some outrage to offer. Here is a former teacher of Constitutional Law on recess appointments, thanks to Powerline:

THEN-SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): Recess appointments 'the wrong thing to do.' "'It's the wrong thing to do. John Bolton is the wrong person for the job,' said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a member of Foreign Relations Committee." ("Officials: White House To Bypass Congress For Bolton Nomination," The Associated Press, 7/30/05)

· OBAMA: A recess appointee is 'damaged goods… we will have less credibility.' "To some degree, he's damaged goods… somebody who couldn't get through a nomination in the Senate. And I think that that means that we will have less credibility…" ("Bush Sends Bolton To U.N." The State Journal-Register [Springfield, IL], 8/2/05)

Who am I to argue with this esteemed scholar and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize? The Powerline Post goes on to quote several luminous Democrats, including Harry Reid and John Kerry to the same effect. Perhaps that will satisfy Donald's appetite for outrage.

Here is an outrage free analysis of the issue. The Constitution provides for the President to make appointments during the recess of Congress that would ordinarily require the Senate's approval. From Article 2, Section 2:

Clause 3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

The intention here is obvious: it is to allow the President to keep the government running when Congress is not in session. Recently, however, Presidents have used the power to bypass the Senate and put a nominee into the post who could not have received the approval of that body.

There is nothing unconstitutional about that. Many provisions of the Constitution have been turned to novel uses, as when a President uses the pocket veto to kill a bill without having to write a veto message explaining his action. So long as the procedures pass muster, the motives are not relevant.

However, something novel has happened here. The President made several "recess" appointments this week while the Senate remained in "pro forma" session. The Senate isn't meeting or doing any business, though it could. In pro forma session it recently passed the extension of the payroll tax cut. So is the Senate in recess or not?

The Administration argues that the pro forma sessions are just a gimmick, intended to circumvent the constitutional procedures. That may be true, but it is no truer than the fact that using recess appointments to do an end run around the Senate is a gimmick. The question is whether the procedures are observed.

It is clear that the President is abusing his authority. It is the prerogative of Congress to decide when it is in recess and when not. Consider Article 1, Section 5:

Clause 4: Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

That decisively answers the question of when Congress is in recess and who gets to decide when it is. It is in recess when both houses have agreed that it is recess. The words "or when the President thinks that the Senate is in recess" somehow got left out of the text. It is not among the powers of the President to amend the fundamental document.

This is the modus operandi of Barack Obama. He objected vociferously to Bush's use of "signing statements" which his predecessor added to signed bills in an attempt to modify their execution. Recently he added a signing statement to a bill. He vociferously objected to recess appointments until he got to make some of them.

It is another thing for him to presume a power that is explicitly granted to one of the other two branches of government. I am not sure how this might come before the courts or who would have standing to bring it. It probably ought to come before that body, if, that is, you think the Constitution matters.

Friday, January 06, 2012

"Leaner" is a fine choice of weasel words. It implies, of course, that while the U.S. military is getting smaller, it isn't getting weaker. It's cutting out the fat. Unfortunately, that's nonsense.

We are cutting our military muscle down to its thigh bones.

The U.S. military will steadily shrink the Army and Marine Corps, reduce forces in Europe and probably make further cuts to the nation's nuclear arsenal, the Obama administration said Thursday in a preview of how it intends to reshape the armed forces after a decade of war.

The downsizing of the Pentagon, prompted by the country's dire fiscal problems, means that the military will depend more on coalitions with allies and avoid the large-scale counterinsurgency and nation-building operations that have marked the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In other words, the President thinks we can simply choose not to fight Afghanistan-like wars and instead choose to fight Libya-style wars. That isn't stupid, but it does involve some wishful thinking. It would do to consider that the U.S. was attacked by Al Qaeda operating from within and with the cooperation of the government of Afghanistan. Can we always deal with such threats from the air? We do not always get to choose the problems we face.

Consider also that bit about depending on "coalitions with allies". When our European allies decided that something had to be done about the chaos in Bosnia, the U.S. had to do it. Europe had not the means to police its own borders. If another such problem emerges, we will be as short on ground power as they were.

Maybe Ron Paul was right. Perhaps it was a great mistake to insert U.S. ground forces into Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, it was better to have the power than not. We seem to be about to give that power up. That will leave Washington and our allies with fewer choices when (it would be cowardly and unrealistic to say "if") the next crisis occurs.

I find it hard to blame the President for recognizing the realities that "the country's dire fiscal problems" force him to recognize, at least on one of his "rare visits to the Pentagon." Given those fiscal realities, the decline of America's military power was probably inevitable.

I do blame him for his irresponsible neglect of those fiscal problems. President Obama has acknowledged that our fiscal house is in disarray and that our grand entitlement programs are in need of reform. He has done absolutely nothing to address these problems. He lacks either the courage or the interest to address them, or perhaps he lacks both. This may matter, sooner rather than later.

It is relatively easy for a nation with great power to use that power sparingly and judiciously. It is self-deception to think that one can resolve all foreign policy problems with the smart use of diminished resources. The latter is the new Obama Doctrine.

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

It's just past midnight as I write. With 99.9% of Iowa's precincts reporting, Rick Santorum is leading Mitt Romney by fewer than 20 votes out of almost 61,000 votes between the two of them. Santorum and Romney will end up with about 24.5% each, with Ron Paul coming in third at somewhere at 21.5%. Newt Gingrich has a little over 13%, Rick Perry a little over 10%, and Bachman is at 5%.

The Press reports the Iowa caucus as if were something that a candidate can win by coming in first. Is this the case? Yes and no. Tonight's events will determine the selection of delegates to county caucuses and delegates from those events will meet at a state caucus, in June. The June convention will determine how many delegates represent each candidate at the National Convention.

A few observations are in order. Mike Huckabee's decisive win in the popular vote, although it was only a plurality, turned him into a serious contender for the nomination. Huckabee would come in second in the number of delegates to the National Convention and third after Romney in the number of popular votes during the nominating process. However, neither he nor Romney came near to defeating John McCain, who captured 66% of the vote at the National Convention to Huckabee's 12% and Romney's 9%.

Nearly everyone commenting on the tube played up Santorum's showing tonight. If he wins one more vote than Romney, the Press will call that a victory. If he had come in second everyone will call it a tie. This is not political bias but professional bias. It makes the process seem more exciting.

It would not do to make light of this. Ron Paul will come out way ahead of where he was four years ago, but still in third place. No one expects him to have much of a future after Iowa. That means Santorum is now the only obstacle left between Romney and the nomination. Can Santorum win the nomination?

It's hard to see it. Barack Obama's 2008 Iowa victory propelled him into serious contention for the first time and that momentum lasted all the way to his victory in November. There were two reasons for this. One was that Obama was a uniquely exciting and exotic candidate. The other, more important factor was a deep seated animosity towards Senator Clinton among a wide swath of Democratic voters. Many Democrats viewed the Clintons as sell outs, hucksters who betrayed the hopes and dreams of their party. That same sentiment, incarnate in the body of one Ralph Nader, had earlier put George W. Bush in the White House.

Mitt Romney has never yet generated a great enthusiasm among Republicans at large and I doubt that he will do so before this November. In Iowa he looks poised to receive almost the same number of votes and the same 25% he won in that state in 2008. One way to look at that is that he gained no ground at all. However, if there are no signs of a Romney fever yet taking hold among Republicans, neither are there any signs of Romney-phobia. Republicans do not look upon Romney as any kind of traitor.

I bear no dislike of Rick Santorum but I do not see anything in him to energize the Republican electorate in the way that Barack Obama energized the Democrats last time round. Without a reservoir of anti-Romney sentiment to draw upon, I cannot seem him doing better than Mike Huckabee did against John McCain. I still think that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee.

If I'm right, the only question now is whether Santorum can mount enough of a challenge to fatally damage Romney. In 1976 Ronald Reagan came near to taking the nomination away from a sitting (if unelected) President. I believe that that did serious damage to Ford and helped Jimmy Carter win. Four years later Ted Kennedy did much the same to Carter, helping Reagan to win.

Governor Romney needs to knock Santorum out of the race early or at least secure well more than twice as many popular votes as Santorum in the various caucuses and primaries. If he does that, we will have a real contest in the fall classic. That is the thing to watch for now.

Monday, January 02, 2012

One of the jobs of the President is Chief Legislator. His veto power and his power to call Congress into session come under this heading. Though less formal, it is a very important part of the President's job to keep in constant contact with the leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress. When there is a major legislative task to accomplish, the President can act as leader, sitting down with them, playing a round of golf, calling them on the phone. The President's enormous prestige is an asset which he can use to get the public business done.

Mr. Obama, in general, does not go out of his way to play the glad-handing, ego-stroking presidential role. While he does sometimes offer a ride on Air Force One to a senator or member of Congress, more often than not, he keeps Congress and official Washington at arm's length, spending his down time with a small — and shrinking — inner circle of aides and old friends.

Perhaps Mr. Obama thinks he is above all that "glad-handing" and "ego-stroking". Too bad no one has explained to him that that is a big part of his job.

This week, for example, Mr. Obama is ensconced in the protective bubble of the Secret Service. With him are his closest outside-the-Beltway-friends, including Eric Whitaker, a Chicago doctor, and two of Mr. Obama's Hawaii friends from Punahou School: Mike Ramos, a businessman, and Robert Titcomb, a commercial fisherman whom Mr. Obama has stuck by despite his arrest in April on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute. Mr. Obama bolted from Washington last Friday barely an hour after he had signed legislation extending the payroll tax cut after a grinding fight with House Republicans whose result is widely viewed as a big win for him. His relationship with Washington insiders is described by members of both parties as "remote," "distant" and "perfunctory."

Ms. Cooper is perhaps trying to be gentle, but it's hard to miss the cut in that "protective bubble" wording. The President is self-isolated from the folks in both parties over whom he is supposed to provide leadership.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans say they rarely hear from the president, and members of his own party complain that Mr. Obama and his top aides are handicapping themselves by not reaching out enough.

"When you have relationships with individual members, you can call them up and ask a favor, and a lot of times, if it's not objectionable, you can get things done," said Representative Dennis A. Cardoza, Democrat of California.

I think this confirms the view that I have frequently advanced on this blog. On all the major legislative actions during his presidency, the President has been largely missing in action. I don't give a rat's ass whether Barack's buddies are paying for sex, but I do expect him to take a role in legislation. How can he do that when the legislator's never hear from him?

Perhaps most damning in Cooper's piece is the excuse that the Administration offers for the President's aloofness.

White House officials, however, counter that Mr. Obama's detachment from Congress could end up benefiting him politically. After all, many Americans regard this Congress as dysfunctional, with abysmal approval ratings…

In fact, Mr. Obama's re-election strategy involves running against Congress, particularly the Republican-led House, calling attention to its inability to pass even the simplest legislation without resorting to threats to shut down the government or default on the country's debt.

With that in mind, another senior administration official said, the last thing the president wants is to provide more photo ops of himself golfing with Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, as he did this summer in a frustrated effort to resolve the torturous fight over raising the debt ceiling.

Well, that's okay if you think that the President's only job is getting reelected. If you think that the President's job is doing the public business, then Barack Obama isn't doing his job. Instead he's

playing Taboo with old friends and their families, Wii video games with his wife and daughters or basketball with Robert Wolf, a banker and the rare new best friend Mr. Obama has acquired since entering politics. He vacations with friends from Chicago on Martha's Vineyard in August and in Hawaii at Christmas."

The question that will be answered next November is not whether the White House will be occupied by Barack Obama or some Republican player to be named later. It is whether it will be occupied or not.